The hero of the novel “The Philosopher’s Dance” is a controversial strategic thinker. He worked and still is an advisor to an Arab leader. He took up his job after leaving Palestine on the run after he was accused of dealing with the enemy during wartime, namely Hezbollah.
This thinker or philosopher practiced political dancing. He theorizes democracy and secularism while working for a non-democratic, non-secular leader who supports extremism. He also believes in Arab nationalism and does not recognize Palestinian nationalism. He engages in a sexual relationship with his Israeli colleague (Tzipora), then continues the matter and justifies his actions. He describes it as resistance. He claims his love for his wife, Layal, and at the same time he lives with a Moroccan woman of Jewish origin during his stay in Britain. This woman plays a major role in the novel as a visual artist and has the ability to listen and remain silent.
The philosopher moves to reside in Britain and discovers an attempt to assassinate him by a Druze soldier who was working in the Israeli army. Here the novel sheds light on the reality of the Druze, accusing them and trying to do justice to them at the same time. The credit for thwarting the assassination goes to a man from southern Lebanon who runs a restaurant in London.
The philosopher receives a letter from a deported Palestinian who took refuge in Lebanon, asking him at the end: How do you feel in your homeland? The message affects him greatly, and he searches for the answer whenever he has the opportunity, and there are many opportunities, but he fails to answer. The question forms a basic pillar of the novel as well.
Although the novel is realistic, it does not follow an ascending ladder of events, and what lies within it is much greater than the events mentioned. The novel, as much as it is a novel of events and actions, is an intellectual novel, and here lies the difficulty of talking about it.
She's the one who killed me:
A person does not know what is going on in his hidden world
It is tall and beautiful, and when it fell, the sound of its fall was terrifying
It was as if a mountain had collapsed due to his hugeness and strength. He was the type of man whom you felt would never die or could not die. This is what a person thinks when he sees it filling around him with life. He works like a strange device that moves the flow of life around people, so events begin to come to you from every direction. Pleasant events happen to you. He produces life and distributes it without false packaging or illusions. I did not think that someone like him might depart from our lives in a disgusting car accident.
An existence where no one sees you:
No one can turn to you when you are not yourself. Someone knocks on the door of your thinking to get nothing. Someone extends his hand to your heart to freeze because of its cold. Someone blows on your wounds to spread dust on them. No one stays for you anymore. You are not there. You are in reality. You have headed to that void in which no one will find you, but there is that feeling that took hold of you while you were running away, the loneliness that clung to you to fill the void inside you. This is your existence in which no one sees you, there is only you and your loneliness.!
